his car. And of course I did.” She smiled beatifically. “It was outside your house.”
“He didn’t seem to have a lot to say when he saw you.”
“No, often he doesn’t. He isn’t ready to be back with me yet. He’s still under the influence.”
“The influence of what?”
“Of the Devil Women.”
Jude nearly spilled her Chilean Chardonnay. “I beg your pardon?”
“Devil Women took Ricky away from me. But Devil Women cannot win in the long run. The Power is always stronger than the Devil Women.” Jude was beginning to think she’d drifted into some science fiction B-movie, as Kath went on, “I only have to wait, then Ricky will come back to me.”
“So are you saying that all of the other women with whom Ricky’s spent time with are Devil Women?”
“Oh yes.” No flicker of hesitation.
“And when they are finally defeated, he’ll come back to you?”
“Oh yes.” With exactly the same certainty.
“Kath,” asked Jude gently, “did you know Polly?”
“Polly?”
“Ricky’s daughter. The one who died in the fire at the shop.”
“She’s not my daughter.”
“I know that. Sorry, I should have said ‘Ricky’s stepdaughter’. But did you know her?”
Ignoring the question, Kath went on, “Ricky and I didn’t have children. I was on the Pill.” She spoke this with some pride, as if it were an unusual concept, which, Jude reflected, to women of Kath’s generation, it probably was. “Ricky and I were going to have children later. But then the Devil Women got in the way.”
“Have you ever met any of the Devil Women?” It was not a question that Jude had ever in her life anticipated she might have to ask.
“I’ve seen one or two.”
“Including Lola?”
“I’m not interested in their names.”
“Lola is Ricky’s current wife.” Jude hadn’t wanted to use such a dismissive adjective, but she couldn’t think of another, more appropriate one.
“The one he calls his wife. I am his real wife.”
“And, so far as you’re concerned, she’s just his latest Devil Woman?”
“If you like, yes. But she’s not real.”
“Right.” Jude decided not to take the conversation back into the realms of ‘the Power which arranges such things’, instead asking, “So you have met Lola?”
“I’ve seen her in the shop.”
“But do you feel any resentment towards her?”
Kath gave her a curious look. “Why should I feel resentment?”
“Well, Ricky is married to her.”
“
“Either way, you could regard Lola as someone who’s taken your man from you. And women in that situation have frequently been known to feel considerable resentment.”
“Well, I don’t feel it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not the Devil Women’s fault that they’re Devil Women. There’s an Evil Power that gets into them. They can’t help it. To blame someone for being a Devil Woman is like blaming someone for being born with red hair.”
“Right,” said Jude. “I understand.” Which was not strictly true, but probably a more prudent course than asking for further explanations. “One thing you said interested me, Kath – well, a lot of things you said interested me, but there’s one I’d like to ask about.”
A smile spread across the wrinkled face. “Ask away. It’s a free country.”
“You said you have an instinct for when Ricky is close, when he comes to Fethering…”
“Yes. That’s what I had yesterday morning.”
“And when did you last have it?”
“Last Sunday I knew he was in Fethering.”
“Yes, he was. He actually came to a party at my house.”
Kath smiled again and opened her hands wide, as if to say that her point was proved.
“And did you see him that day?” Kath shook her head. “And there wasn’t another time, between last Sunday and yesterday, when you sensed that Ricky was near you?”
“His car was there on the Sunday,” Kath said slyly.
“Yes, we’ve just established that.”
“But it was also here later on the Sunday.”
“Could you sense that?” The Dippy Hippy looked her curiously. “I mean, did you have an instinct that the car was here?”
“No,” came the prosaic reply. “I saw it. Parked down by the Yacht Club.”
“What time of day was this?”
“Evening. Eightish, probably.”
“Yes. And did you see Ricky in the car?” Kath nodded vigorously. “Did you talk to him?”
“No. I wouldn’t talk to him under those circumstances.”
“Under what circumstances?”
“He wasn’t alone. He had his latest Devil Woman with him.”
“Lola?”
“I told you, I’m not interested in their names. She’s the latest Devil Woman to seduce Ricky away from me.”
So it had been Lola. In spite of their denials of the fact, Jude now knew that Ricky Le Bonnier and his young wife had been in Fethering in his Mercedes 4?4 on the evening that Gallimaufry had been set on fire.
? The Shooting in the Shop ?
Seventeen
“From what you say,” Carole observed, as she sipped a cup of coffee in Jude’s overfilled sitting room, “she sounds like Fethering’s answer to Miss Havisham – a woman whose entire life stopped when a man let her down.”
“There is an element of that about her,” Jude agreed. “Except that she’s not embittered. She seems to have a very cheerful and benign outlook on life. And she’s absolutely convinced that all Ricky’s affairs with other women are just aberrations. He’s still really hers. To her mind he’s never stopped being hers.”
“Which, I would say, is a measure of quite how seriously that mind is disturbed.” Then Carole, ever practical, went on to ask, “What does she live on? Fresh air, or does she have a private income?”
“She’s got a job. Ted filled me in on a few details after she’d left. She does the books for Ayland’s, one of the boatyards along the Fether – one of the few that are still in business. Apparently she’s had that job for most of her life. Still, from what I gather, she has a fairly frugal lifestyle. So she doesn’t need much money.”
“Just enough to keep her in crystals and joss sticks?”
Jude ignored the gibe and went on, “But I think Kath’s a reliable witness.”
“What, because she has
“No,” said Jude patiently. “Because she keeps a very clear division between what you call her ‘instincts’ and things she has actually seen with her own eyes. And she definitely saw Ricky and Lola in the Mercedes 4?4 on the evening of the fire.”
“Yes, that’s odd, isn’t it, because when Ricky came to see us, he implied that he had gone straight home to Fedborough after he left your party. What time did he leave, by the way?”
